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Thursday, March 28, 2002

THE EMI MELTDOWN:nme.com are reporting that as the axe man runs through the hallways of EMI, all that's saved McCartney and Jagger from the axe is their rich and fruity back catalogue, which is kind of interesting. They're also suggesting that Perry Farrel and Ben Harper are amongst the artists who really should start writing letters to Cooking Vinyl...

NOW WE ARE SIX: now s-club 7 become s club. as one of them pisses off to join a schoolmate's nu-metal band (okay, because *that* is a sane thing to do) Only problem is, their telly series are called [place name] 7, aren't they? So what are they going to do about that, then?
of course, the place to go for the scoop is Newsround, and its reaction board, which is priceless:
I'm not surprised that Paul is leaving. Nobody wants to do pop anymore. All bands like that will split up in a year or so. But it's sad though because there are too many solo singers now, it is boring! Sappho, 10, WeybridgeA ten year old called sappho? I blame eastenders meself. But "Nobody wants to do pop anymore", eh? Um... how many twat-bearers turned up for the Pop Idol auditions?
This just proves that pop music is near it's end. It's sad but true. Sarah, 15, GrimsbyWell, she's had a lot of experience... how old would she have been when Take That split? eight?
I have been crying for hours but I still love them. Fiona, 13, Billinghameh? You're thirteen, for christ's sake - you should be thinking Marilyn manson is a headfuck, not pissing about with S Club bloody 7...

Wednesday, March 27, 2002

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY 27/03/02: so The Face is currently running an exclusive on Kurt's diaries, which, as you'd imagine, has a Courtney front page. Oddly, this piece was originally intended for the dead-as-Kurt Talk, so how it wound up in the ailing brit fashion "bible" is anyone's guess - as indeed is why people still call The Face a fashion bible at all...

record mirror this week has an exclusive interview with brian molko and brett anderson, in which they pre-empt any further speculation by announcing they're going to have a child together. "We realise we might need a lady to get involved at one point or other" sniggers Brett "but for now, we're just practising on what we can do up our end"...

the nme has an easter theme. okay, it doesn't, but the lostprophets are burning a bunny on the front page...

news leads on the police "forcing" the so solids off the homelands bill is actually quite interesting - Hampshire Police do say that they'd have gone to the council had the band been kept on the bill "and the licence for the festival probably would have been revoked" - so, that's the police second guessing what the judiciary would do, then. The so solids - or at least those not out waving guns about - issued a statement to the effect that the public are being denied the right to see what they want to see, and asking "is this democracy?" Well, no. And it does seem hugely unfair that they've been banned by police, rather than ruled out because they're crap. The main trouble with the so solids, though, is that they're their own worst enemies - sure, they can point to their shiny record of only one gig where anyone actually got killed all they like, but the fact remains that their act and stance is tied up tightly with violent imagery - the one who beat up the teenage girl for not having sex with him, for example, left court and went straight on to make a video in which he played some sort of gangsta street figure. The defence of the so solids is reminiscent of Gary Bushell's letter to the Guardian defending Jim Davidson this week - "Davidson is no racist"; maybe not, but his act certainly has been. Trouble is, the police can force SSC off as many bills as they like, but it won't stop the gun culture. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't some sort of incident at Homelands this year anyway, now that its become an issue of this magnitude...

other news: "I'm never going to the Met Bar again" cries Liam, after having an argument with one of MisTeeq (oooh, taking on teenage girls now, Liam - not angling for a place in the So Solids, are you?); they ask stars what they wouldn't advertise for a million pounds - Lee from Blue says "Cruelty to animals" (because, yeah, the Royal Society for Promotion of Cruelty to Animals is always looking for celeb endorsements, aren't they?); oddly, the front page of the NME teases this item with the words "Starbucks? Child porn? What wouldn't stars advertise for £1,000,000?" - and neither gets mentioned anywhere in the actual piece. Hmmmm. "I would never ... you know, like... she [Madonna] would masturbate on a bed. I don't get that" - so says Britney. But then, she's so rich she could probably afford a special wanking chair or something; some fool claims that Glastonbury is going to be sunny - "going on previous years" - right; occasional flashes of the words "Pills" and "Bombs" on-screen in Oasis' Does Your Mother Know George Harrison video proves that "oasis live in 2002, and not 1967" says director Wiz - yes, because there were no anti-war movements in the late 1960s, were there? - but then admits that it was his idea anyway; the new Korn album has cost three million to put together, working out at 800 pounds a second. Money, I'm sure, well-spent; meanwhile, the nme still seems to think that anyone left in the country still finds ali G in any way amusing...

goss-lite: a list star makes rock nobody friend at counselling; britpop
frontman annoying record company by demanding world cup tickets; ageing dance star getting off with groupies to pinch their drugs...

hoobastank offer polite nu-metal (is this copied out of Kerrang? mean, really - who cares about nu-metal bands turning up now? it's like getting the wine list delivered with the cheque)...

the lostprophets are unloved by the metal press, it seems. "its because their girlfriends fancy us" reckons the band's Mike. As if a rock writer would have a girlfriend...

Ian from the Coral offers the four types of sex: "sympathy shag, porn dirty shag, intense lovemaking and routine." Oh, and "the backhander"...

oh. badly drawn boy has put his hat back on. wanker. The article is white on black and printed so tiny it's impossible to read, but Damon does say "I can perform songs with the minimum of drink, like a couple of shorts." Aha. that sober...

since the features are so crap, lets flick to the reviews - cornershop -
handcream for a generation ("happy music for hard times", 8); billy bragg - england, half english ("sounds just as dated as the social traditions he lampoons",5) shakira - laundry service (the review just quotes some lyrics and says that she's weird, like its been written by Nora Batty, 5)...

sotw: The vines - highly evolved ("going to be bigger than U2, gareth gates and Nickelback combined"); wsotw: susumu & rothko - waters edge ep. In between: Ballboy's All the records on the radio are shite...

ANOTHER PUNK ANNIVERSARY: God, ten years on, fifteen years on, twenty years on, twenty one years on... now we're up to the silver jubilee, and we're in for the same old yak. I'd imagine Lydon has already bought a new suit and shoes for the rounds he'll be doing. And, fair play to him, he's turned himself into a veritable Peter Ustinov. But perhaps its time to actually take stock of the movement once and for all, and see it for what it was.
Of course, I'm grateful for it having happened, that without it we might now be sat here discussing Emerson Lake and Palmer's link up with Mike Oldfield while BBC Six prepares for a weekend of the best Phil Collins - ever. But in the twenty five long years, the breaking wave of 1977 has spread itself out so far, its hard to point at very much and say "That's punk's doing, that is" with any degree of certainty, and certainly without adding "and, of course, hiphop/eddy shah/tucker jenkins" - maybe Tony Parsons' pisspoor book and the BBC serial based on it and Julie Burchill's weekly brain wrong in ink for the weekend Guardian, but beyond that - what? Without punk, Oasis could easily have existed, just maybe a bit nicer to children. Rave's fingerprints are all over 2002, and that movement owed more to Northern Soul than Never Mind the Bollocks. Indeed, Rave's aggressive promotion of self in the face of state hostility tasted more of a 1960's anti-war protest movement, and was therefore more akin to the hippies punk swore to obliterate.
So, should we stop the old punks from telling us what they did in the culture wars? Maybe not, but someone should ask them to listen to what they're saying, rather than letting them run out the stories we've heard so many times before. McClaren, of course, will hide his Virgin Club Class eyecovers and slippers before trotting out the tales of the battle with capitalism; Lydon is already trilling about anarchy; Branson popping up to bemoan being robbed by the charts.
This is what's so sad - old punks still fighting over the fucking Top 40 chart from twenty five years ago. In god's name, why? Wasn't the chart a symbol of all you were meant to despise? Wasn't punk meant to be about a feeling, two fingers at the music industry? And yet here you are, still worrying about a list of record read out by - Jesus, probably Paul Burnett or someone. The final sting, of course, is that the record industry disregarded its own rules in order to get the list it wanted. The ends were more important than the means; the laws were ignored. In effect, the BPI was more anarchic in 1977 than you bunch ever were. The sad thing is that you cared about a sales chart. See you at the 30th, lads.

SHIRLEY ON THE TELLY: So, still uber-queen despite the hair (what is that, Greg Proops goes to Gwen's?) Shirley Manson was on the BBC's Liquid News last night, and was pretty good on the Britney crisis - her take was, it's nice if you can do these things (Brit was booed for not gladhanding her fans at the premiere of Crossroads, btw), but anyone who turns up should only do so in the expectation of failing, not the certainty of a chance of meeting the star. (This should be drummed into the person who runs a Mel C list and excitedly posted how soon she'll be putting up pictures of her and Mel - because she's going to spend a week in London, and Mel C is in London, so its obvious they'll bump into each other...). What was curious, though, was that in a show which lingered on the banned Ali G poster (subject of 100 complaints, and the reason why UIP will have to have all adverts pre-vetted by the ASA in future) and featured a woman yelling over the heads of her children "Britney can stick her movie up her arse", when Shirley slipped out the word "shit", the fill-in presenter immediately rushed forward to apologise for the "bad" language. Hmmm.
Talking of bad language, Tony Wilson was on Midweek earlier, and seemed disappointed that London Underground will only allow him to appear labelled as a "Twit" on posters for 24 Hour Party People (and aren't you sick of that already?), rather than the "Twat" he gets called above ground...

Tuesday, March 26, 2002

ROCK SCRAPBOOK: Ryan Adams dances like a Spanish monkey on Elton's shoulders; Sting, Macca, Dylan applaud. "We like your little monkey" says Sting. "He bores me now" cries Dylan.
Bono pops up to vouch for Peter Buck at his air rage trial. Last week, of course, Bono was standing shoulder to shoulder with George Bush, vouching for him as a man of honour and decency. Buck's going to go down for a long time, isn't he?
which is bad news for trees in Virginia. "If Daddy goes to jail, who will look after us?" sobs a willow
MisTeeq say gun-toting so-solid fool is "lovely." Coming up at 11: "That Mark Chapman, he was so sweet"
Britney and Justin very much in love, says official statement:. It reads:
"To set it straight, both of them are very busy and focusing on their careers.
"They love each other very much and have not broken up. The demands on their time have naturally created a significant time apart, which could be misconstrued as a more permanent situation".
In reference to reports that both have been seen flaunting their freedom in numerous nightclubs across the globe, the statement concludes: "As for spotting in clubs, they are both young and like to dance".Erm, which is fine, except...
Britney not in a serious relationship, she tells press conference

Monday, March 25, 2002

PRE-ORDAINED... NB: Less surprising than Will being gay. From Media MonkeyMarked from the start
Still wondering why Will Young hasn't had a big commercial deal following his Pop Idol triumph and why it went to the runner-up instead? According to reports at the weekend, Pepsi knew exactly what it wanted from Pop Idol long before Gareth and Will slugged it out in the final round - the same that pop svengali Simon "high trousers" Cowell wanted: a cute, young, docile boy from Bradford, aka Gareth Gates. It now transpires the drinks giant decided its £75,000 would go to gap-toothed Gates back in January. "We started looking at Gareth from about 10 weeks into the competition," says Pepsi marketeer Karen Goffe. So if you didn't know it already Will - at 23 years old, you won't be a pop idol for long.

CASH COW: A piece in Friday's FT provides some further business-related background to EMI's problems, along with a similar piece in Saturday's Guardian, which will make glum reading for people who are desperate to see the music industry as a battery farm. However, EMI aren't really learning from their mistakes - having spent a small fortune buying Mariah and then realising their expensive mistake, the eggs-in-one-basket approach is being repeated today with a huge Robbie Williams deal. Yes, he may be bloody popular now, for whatever reason, but so was Mariah. Forty million quid spent on a single huge ego... how many new acts could be nurtured and grown for that? Or even one-tenth of that. It's interesting that EMI seem to be on the point of making the same mistake ITV Digital have - Robbie Williams could be their Nationwide Premier, an over priced commodity that could start to leach money needed away from the rest of their operations precisely at the time those need the most attention...